I was taught that the name of this principle is the Rule of
Homorganic Consonants, which I think is a much more impressive name
than Assimilation.

Bill


>Spelling is dear to my heart, since I came through the Calvert system,
>where we learned rules from the third grade on.  But we never had the
>Assimilation rule, which I learned around 1968 from a spelling workbook
>I used in teaching 6th grade language arts.  My favorite!
>
>Words formed with Latin prefixes ending in consonants (ad, ob, in, sub,
>con, dis) but not ab (which is often a) or (ex, which is often e) and
>not prefixes ending in vowels (like re and pre)  added to roots
>beginning with consonants will assimilate the prefix by turning the
>prefix consonant into another of the root's consonants. (See-- the name
>illustrates the principle!)
>affect, address, arrogant
>occur, offer
>surround, suffer
>collect, commit
>differ
>
>You will never misspell occurrence (well, you have to know the doubling
>rule too) or accommodate or immigrate or emigrate again!  I now teach
>high school juniors, and they get a kick out of this, even the ones
>who've never had any Latin (and they get more numerous every year...)
>Just a quick mini-lesson and some vocabulary-building to boot.
>
>Jane Saral
>Westminster Schools
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